Who was Hereward the Wake

A. A Saxon leader who fought the Normans on the Isle of Ely shortly after the conquest. His story fired popular imagination and is mixed with much myth and folklore.< xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

Q. Such as

A. Hereward was a native of Lincolnshire, and upon his return to his estates at Bourne, about 1070, he discovered that they had been given to a Norman, Ivo de Taillebuis, by William the Conqueror. Hereward found the decapitated head of his beloved brother had been impaled outside.

Q. An oath of vengeance was sworn

A. You've got it in one. That night, Hereward killed 15 Norman soldiers and put their heads in the place of his brother's. That was just the beginning of his wrath. He joined a party of Danes who had appeared in England, attacked Peterborough, sacked the abbey and then took refuge in the Isle of Ely, a remote spot in the fens of Cambridgeshire, shrouded in mists. His camp was surrounded by water.

Q. And the Norman attacked

A. Yes - but Hereward led them on a merry dance. The Normans had to build bridges and rafts to assault the settlement. Hereward watched as the enemy worked away ... then he sank the rafts and set the bridges alight. At some stage, though, monks at the abbey betrayed him and William's men got into Ely. Hereward then escaped and hit back as an outlaw.

Q. For how long

A. This is where it gets confusing. It seems he was captured, but pardoned by William, who forgave him for such as spirited defence. Hereward soon came to stand as a hero for the defeated Saxon race.

Q. And the myth grew

A. Yes. The exploits of such a hero immediately captured the popular imagination. Women sang about him in their dances, and extensive folk literature was circulating within a few years of his death. He was soon given fine family connections, and a pedigree by those keen to claim him as an ancestor.

Q. And what about his name

A. 'The Wake' - or the watchful one - is first recorded in a chronicle attributed to John of Peterborough. Then other tales began to appear. Some of them were distinctly along the lines of a comic-book adventure.

Q. Such as

A. As a youth, Hereward visited Cornwall and found that King Alef, a British chief, had betrothed his fair daughter to a terrible Pictish giant, breaking off her engagement with Prince Sigtryg of Waterford, son of a Danish king in Ireland.

The chivalrous Hereward picked a quarrel with the giant and killed him in fair fight, whereupon the king threw him into prison. The next night, the released princess arranged that the gallant Saxon should be freed and sent him for her lover, Prince Sigtryg.

After many adventures Hereward reached the prince and they both returned to Cornwall. There they learned upon their arrival that the princess had just been betrothed to a wild Cornish hero, Haco, and the wedding feast was to be held that day. It was time for more heroics from the all-action Saxon he-man...

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Steve Cunningham